Friday, October 28, 2016

Inflation

A few days ago when I commented on an announcement claiming that the universe's expansion is perhaps not accelerating. I mentioned in passing that I was not convinced of "initial inflation." After seeing posts defending dark energy from several directions, I thought I'd point you to a talk by one of the developers of the theory, who thinks it doesn't work. Hat tip to Peter Woit). That's an insider's take--I'm not at all expert on inflation. He thinks the theory inconsistent, that it doesn't work very well, and that it is not falsifiable. I took it to be an ad-hoc explanation that just appeared out of nowhere to explain why a model doesn't work right. ("In the "Deerslayer" tale Cooper has a stream which is fifty feet wide where it flows out of a lake; it presently narrows to twenty as it meanders along for no given reason, and yet when a stream acts like that it ought to be required to explain itself.")